Italian Grammar Lessons: The Imperfect Tense

The imperfect tense is one of the most frequently used past tenses in Italian, both in oral and written language. We use the imperfect form:

– to describe people, animals, places and situations in the past;
– to talk about habits in the past;
– to describe physical or psychological states in the past;
– when talking about actions which were taking place at the same moment;

The conjugation of a verb in the imperfect is not normally a difficulty, but you may initially hesitate as to whether to use the imperfect or another past tense.

But first, the conjugations! Here are some examples of verbs conjugated in the imperfect:

Below are some sentences showing how the imperfect tense is used, along with English translations.

As you will see from studying them, different English tenses can be used to translate the Italian imperfect form, but the core meaning is always of the ‘past habit’, ‘past state’ or ‘past action in progress’ type.

Da piccolo vivevo in campagna in una grande fattoria. [When I was a child I lived on a big farm.]

Io avevo tanti animali. [I had lots of pets.]

Quando abitavo a Bologna con i miei genitori, non usavamo mai la macchina perché preferivamo la bicicletta. [When I lived in Bologna with my parents, we never used the car because we preferred cycling.]

Non avevo animali in città perché non avevamo spazio in casa. [We didn’t have animals in the city because we didn’t have enough space at home.]